After watching the first game and downing a few beers, that's too complicated for the average football fan

They don't have to understand it. They just have to look up when the game is. For fans of west coast teams (and the Broncos), they'll never see a game that starts at 12:30 ET. For fans of east and central teams, they'll occasionally have to start at home game at 4 ET because they're playing against a west coast team. Their other home games start at 12:35 instead of 1:05. Hardly a big deal. 11:35 in the Central might be a little tougher with church on Sundays, but it would probably be fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steveknj

Seriously, drop one of the shows from CBS schedule. Do a hightlights show between 7 and 8, or do what Fox does, run reruns of some of their sitcoms from 7:30 to 8 when there is no overrun.

I agree this is the right solution. My idea is assuming (probably rightfully so) that they won't do it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steveknj

Or, how about this...run 60 Minutes "Special Edition" during those football weeks and run with just one story and start it at 7:30? This still satisfies the 60 Minutes fans somewhat and they can go and keep their schedule.

You realize the show is called "60 Minutes," right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steveknj

But I guess, since ratings are relatively strong on CBS the way they do things now for their Sunday shows, they aren't going to mess with it. So get used to that 10 o'clock block starting at 11 on those DH Sundays.

Also, it's only the eastern half of the country that has its schedule screwed up on Sundays. 60 Minutes starts at 7 p.m. PT every week in the west. If this was screwing up everyone, a solution might be just to have four hours of prime time on Sundays that lasts from 7:30 until 11:30. But that won't work because the west doesn't need it.

Thanks for the reminder. I added an hour of padding to "CSI:Miami" a long time ago but I also watch "The Good Wife". Since I don't watch "The Mentalist", I just modified my SP for "The Good Wife" and added an hour to it. Deleted the "CSI:Miami" SP at the same time.

Or do some sort of post late game wrap up show like Fox. They could either push back the late local news or simply drop a portion of prime time programming. If the goal is to make sure the precious 60 Minutes stays intact for a full 60 minutes, they can do it.

Hopefully I'm not smeeking here, but my thought would be that if they really don't want to just add a football wrap up show before starting 60 minutes at 8pm (moving 60 minutes to the later time period), they could go with a "live" 60 minutes segment to fill the time between the end of whenever 60 minutes would have finished it's traditional hour and whatever show they'd wind up running at 9pm (east coast). Use the time to revisit previous stories, answer fan questions, have a panel discussion about the stories that aired that night, or opine about the news of the week that they didn't otherwise talk about during the main show.
Alternative, rather than directly copying from FOX and running the OT show to do a football wrap up before the prime time programming, go ahead and do a wrap up show *after* 60 minutes, preceeding whatever show follows the delayed 60 minutes show.
They'd still lose one prime time show for the night, but at least they wouldn't be screwing over the fans of the shows that are constantly getting juggled due to the football overruns.

As others have noted though, CBS could fix this and they don't. They don't want to as they really don't care about anyone watching their content on a delayed basis. Never mind that I could very easily instead (and do) watch something on FOX or NBC, or another channel rather than deal with anything that CBS is airing on Sunday evenings.

They're not. They're adjusting for the fans who are tired of watching a 1:00 Eastern game, and, with seconds remaining in the game and one team headed for what could be the winning score, having CBS or Fox cut away to the second game of the doubleheader because the "local team" is playing and the contract the networks have with the NFL requires it. The move to 4:25 makes this far less likely to happen.

If CBS or Fox had any say in the matter, I would think that it would have been to make the move to "only" 4:25 instead of 4:30 - probably mainly Fox, to keep from having to start The Simpsons after 8 PM, and Family Guy after 9 PM, more than necessary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by terpfan1980

Hopefully I'm not smeeking here, but my thought would be that if they really don't want to just add a football wrap up show before starting 60 minutes at 8pm (moving 60 minutes to the later time period), they could go with a "live" 60 minutes segment to fill the time between the end of whenever 60 minutes would have finished it's traditional hour and whatever show they'd wind up running at 9pm (east coast). Use the time to revisit previous stories, answer fan questions, have a panel discussion about the stories that aired that night, or opine about the news of the week that they didn't otherwise talk about during the main show.

What do you do out west between 8 and 9 Pacific? Show a 15-minute "60 Minutes Plus", and then 45 minutes of what?

This has always been a problem with whatever networks show Sunday afternoon football - how do you fill the 7-8 Pacific time slot if something got pre-empted out east? At one time, CBS had a policy that if football (or golf) ran past 7:30 (back in the days when the late games started at 4:00), whatever hour-long show it had at 8:00 was pre-empted that night; half the time, the west coast stations would get a local program from 8 to 9, and the other half, the 9:00 programming started an hour earlier, without any warning to the viewers.

Then again, with the new time announcement, I expect to see CBS announce that, on its NFL doubleheader days, they will alternate between pre-empting The Good Wife and The Mentalist that week, with a repeat from last season airing out west.

Last edited by That Don Guy; 06-29-2012 at 02:43 PM..
Reason: Merged two consecutive posts

CBS had two sets of viewers (some overlap) to satisfy: Those who didn't want to miss the end of a late game that ran over and those that didn't want an attenuated "60 Minutes " ( tried briefly). Other than more or less giving up the 7-8 time which they had lost once before, shifing the entire schedule when there was an overrun was the only way to come even close to satisfying both groups.

Then again, with the new time announcement, I expect to see CBS announce that, on its NFL doubleheader days, they will alternate between pre-empting The Good Wife and The Mentalist that week, with a repeat from last season airing out west.

I don't think an extra 10 minutes is going to convince CBS to finally change their ways.

Since I live on the west coast and DVR all games that I watch, the only impact this has on me is that it lessens the chance that while I'm watching the end of the early game, the score of a late game I'm going to watch next flashes on the bottom of the screen and I find out who scores first. So for that, I give it a thumbs up.

Presumably, Fox will actually slot the second game into a 3:05 length, which is more reasonable (i.e., they'll schedule something to start at 7:30, probably "The OT").

Fox doesn't really "slot" the second game, except maybe for program listing/DVR purposes. The O.T. starts right after the last game on Fox ends (assuming it's before 8 PM Eastern), and ends at 8.

In fact, the primary reason The O.T. exists is because Fox tried slotting King of the Hill at 7:30 on doubleheader days, and the show had to be "joined in progress" in the east almost every time (in fact, one episode only had its last five minutes air in the east); unlike CBS, Fox does not treat its Sunday 7-8 timeslot as something that is worth delaying the rest of the night's shows if necessary.

Hopefully I'm not smeeking here, but my thought would be that if they really don't want to just add a football wrap up show before starting 60 minutes at 8pm (moving 60 minutes to the later time period), they could go with a "live" 60 minutes segment to fill the time between the end of whenever 60 minutes would have finished it's traditional hour and whatever show they'd wind up running at 9pm (east coast). Use the time to revisit previous stories, answer fan questions, have a panel discussion about the stories that aired that night, or opine about the news of the week that they didn't otherwise talk about during the main show.
Alternative, rather than directly copying from FOX and running the OT show to do a football wrap up before the prime time programming, go ahead and do a wrap up show *after* 60 minutes, preceeding whatever show follows the delayed 60 minutes show.
They'd still lose one prime time show for the night, but at least they wouldn't be screwing over the fans of the shows that are constantly getting juggled due to the football overruns.

As others have noted though, CBS could fix this and they don't. They don't want to as they really don't care about anyone watching their content on a delayed basis. Never mind that I could very easily instead (and do) watch something on FOX or NBC, or another channel rather than deal with anything that CBS is airing on Sunday evenings.

Another reason they won't fix it is that CBS probably gets a HUGE ratings bump when football overruns. Too late to switch to something else, lets just stick with the CBS shows. Most are good anyway. Even though I have a DVR, on most nights there's a late game, rather than mess around with the DVR I just watch CBS stuff live if possible. Sometimes that means shuffling any 10PM recordings I have (luckily during football season, HBO runs Boardwalk Empire...I just record the HBOWest feed and watch it later in the week).

They're not. They're adjusting for the fans who are tired of watching a 1:00 Eastern game, and, with seconds remaining in the game and one team headed for what could be the winning score, having CBS or Fox cut away to the second game of the doubleheader because the "local team" is playing and the contract the networks have with the NFL requires it. The move to 4:25 makes this far less likely to happen.

That was my point. I was asking the people complaining why they think the NFL should cater to CBS, when they don't have to.